


Floriography

by greeneggs101



Series: Tussie-Mussies [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Language of Flowers, M/M, outside pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2548313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneggs101/pseuds/greeneggs101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone just wanted to check on the flowers and eat her Lucky Charms in peace. The boy was just an inconvenience. Seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floriography

**Author's Note:**

> So this kind of took over my thoughts for a while. Persephone was always one of my favorite goddesses, so I wanted to explore her relationship with my favorite demigod, Nico. And then I read Blood of Olympus and well then solangelo happened and then this happened. 
> 
> Flower meanings are in end notes.

Despite what some humans thought, Persephone equally enjoyed her time above and below ground. Her days below in the underworld gave her time with her husband, whom she did love in her own way, despite his tendency to stray in her absence. She missed her personal underworld garden and she enjoyed her powers as the Queen of the Underworld.

But, her days above gave her time to breath in air that wasn’t polluted with the smell of death. However, she was also forced to spend days with her mother, whom she missed dearly, of course, but after about, say, an hour, Persephone wished she could enjoy more alone time.

Hence, after centuries of asking, she convinced her mother to let her go on some daily walks with the tree nymphs in the forests and orchards.

Her mother was a bit more fearful this year when she wanted to go for her walks. It was the spring after the Second Gigantomachy, and even her husband was fearful to let her out of sight. While her own form hadn’t changed as much between Persephone and Proserpine, both her mother and husband were besieged by severe headaches and personality changes. Hades had already kept her pretty close after Hera had been kidnapped, and her mother wanted to keep her even closer when the war was over.

But she insisted on her walk, if only because she needed the five minutes away from her mother and her insistence on eating “proper” cereal for breakfast. Apparently Lucky Charms and fruit loops weren’t “proper” and didn’t count as cereal. But the marshmallows and colors were so charming, Persephone couldn’t really resist.

Persephone had walked away from another such argument, willing herself to transport somewhere her mother wasn’t. She found herself in a grove of trees. She began to walk, chatting with the tree nymphs who stopped to say hello and willing the dormant flower seeds to grow on the forest floor.

It was here that she stumbled upon him.

In a spot of sunlight within the grove, she spotted a dark haired boy with pale skin. It didn’t take her long to recognize the boy as her husband’s son. He was huddled around a small bloom, peering at it in disgust. As Persephone stepped closer, she saw that the bloom looked, well, rather dead.

She huffed. How dare that boy kill one of the few naturally blooming flowers in this forest. Poor thing didn’t live long before he must have gotten ahold of it.

She was contemplating what flower to turn him into this time, perhaps a violet, when her rational mind begged her to look closer.

The boy, Nico, appeared to have been crying. Though huddled as he was, Persephone could still see that his cheeks and eyes were red with tears. Next to him sat a small watering can, and a plastic bag that Persephone could smell from her spot farther away. Fertilizer.

This was...different.

Though she held no actual love for the boy, she recognized that her husband did love him and wished for him to be happy. Over the past winter she just enjoyed her time away from the reminder of her husband’s past dalliances as Nico had chosen to remain at the camp for demigods.

However, his presence here, and his apparent new interest in horticulture, intrigued her enough to step into the light.

“Boy, what are you doing to that poor plant?” She asked, trying to keep the interest out of her voice. Despite her curiosity, she didn’t want the boy to think she actually cared or anything.

The dark haired boy shot up and immediately began backing away. “I didn’t do anything. I tried! I really did! But it died anyway!” he wiped the tears from his eyes and stared at her. Persephone guessed that he would be glaring, if he hadn’t learned his lesson the last time that had happened. He did make a nice dandelion.

“You tried to what?” she asked simply. “Make it grow?”

The boy didn’t answer but he looked down at the small, shriveled plant between them.

Persephone sighed and spread her hands over the plant. She could sense the problems immediately. Planting a daffodil in April? “You overwatered it, not to mention this bulb is more suited for a different planting season.”

Nico looked back up at her. “Seeds can be planted at different seasons?”

“Of course foolish child.” She snapped. Then sighed. “Why on earth were you trying to grow a daffodil anyway?”

Immediately the boy’s face grew red. Interesting. But he refused to answer.

Persephone sighed. “Tell the truth now, boy,” she ordered, willing the child to answer promptly.

His mouth opened, clearly against his wishes. “For Will, he likes yellow flowers!” He nearly shouted, and then covered his mouth with his hands, his face going from red to as white as his fathers. He turned to run away, but Persephone willed the nearby flowers to grab his ankles, and he fell with a grunt.

“A boy?” she asked, stepping closer to Nico. “From camp?”

Again she willed him to tell the answers, knowing that he was getting angry with her.

“A son of Apollo.”

She gave this a few minutes to process. When she looked back at the dark haired boy, he was already trying to untangle his feet from the flower vines. She merely asked the flowers to tie his hands as well.

Normally she wouldn’t have bothered, knowing that her presence alone would have caused the boy, Nico, to give up his ridiculous attempts at floriculture. But his interest in growing the flower, for a boy nonetheless, gave her pause.

“You like the boy?”

She didn’t even need to will him to answer, as his face, recovering from the shock of revealing himself earlier, reddened again. But he remained silent, recognizing that Persephone wasn’t ordering him to answer truthfully.

His silence and nervousness made Persephone reflect on her previous actions. Then she did something she never expected to do for any offspring between Hades and one of his affairs: apologize.

“I’m sorry.”

His head, understandably, shot up in shock. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not repeating myself.” She replied sharply. “But I realize I made you unwillingly reveal a very personal secret. For that I regret my actions.”

Nico muttered something and if Persephone weren’t a goddess, she wouldn’t have heard it. “Just don’t tell father...” The words were extremely quiet, and it was clear he hadn't really expected her to hear them, or abide by them.

“Not unless it becomes an issue I won’t.” She replied anyway. She sighed and snapped her fingers, the flowers instantly releasing Nico, who didn’t try to run again. “Why didn’t you just give this boy a store bought flower? I hear you can purchase yellow roses in grocery stores now?” She rolled her eyes. Honestly, the roses in grocery stores were a pitiful excuse for flowers, already feeling half dead before some soul purchases them for a holiday or to mend a broken promise, but she sees people buying them all the time.

“I did.” Nico again muttered. “They died before I could give them to him.”

Nico was sitting silently on the ground, his face lowered and his hair hanging limply in his eyes, glaring at his hands which had clearly caused the death of the flowers sooner than expected. Children of Hades rarely had any luck with living things, whether people, animals, or plants. It was clear that he was deeply upset and ashamed of his inability to give a flower to the boy he likes.

“So you thought growing one and not touching it might solve the problem of transportation?” Persephone guessed.

Nico nodded.

She sighed and then picked up a handful of dirt sifting it between her fingers till she had exactly what she needed. She handed the dark seeds to the boy. “Here, plant these instead. They are hardy, and planting them now will mean they will have time to grow and bloom before the end of summer.”

He hesitated, but ended up taking the seeds from her hand. “What are they?”

“What... haven't you ever seen--” She stopped herself, realizing that it was entirely possible that Nico, with as long as he had been away from the world, never actually had seen seeds like these. “Never mind. I guess they will just have to be a surprise then. But trust me, given that the subject of your affection is a son of Apollo...” she trailed off and giggled to herself at the joke. “He’ll probably like them.”

Nico looked wearily at the seeds, clearly not trusting her, but desperate to impress this son of the sun god.

She turned to leave, but his voice made her stop. “How often do I water them?”

She turned back around inquisitively, and he pointed to the dead plant. “You said I overwatered that one... so how often to I water these?”

Persephone stared at him, mildly impressed. Though he clearly disliked her, much as she did him, he was still willing to put aside that dislike for the benefit of the plant, and, in the long term, the expected happiness of another.

She wondered if conflicts between the Olympians could be avoided more often if they were more like Nico. Then she shook the thought out of her head and looked back at the boy who was still waiting for an answer.

“Water at least once a day till they start sprouting, then only water once a week with lots of water.”

He nodded and stared intently at the seeds. She left him to his own devices, willing the dead plant to decay and return to the earth as she passed by it. Before Persephone left the grove completely she offered one last comment. “I’d find a place with a bit more sunshine if I were you though. They’ll really blossom with long term exposure to the sun.”

With that parting comment she left, expecting not to think of the boy again for the year. At least, not until she returned to the Underworld and finds yet another pomegranate from her personal garden missing its seeds.

However, just a few weeks later she found herself in a meadow that was fairly close to the Greek demigod camp. The meadow was in full bloom of wildflowers, each blossom leaning into her presence.

She sat among them, trying to come up with more reasons why fruit loops were much better for her health than oat bran cereal. The reasons “they are more colorful,” “they taste better” and “I’m a goddess mother, it’s not like I actually need the nutritional value of oat bran” hadn’t flown by very well with Demeter, so Persephone was instead musing the idea of trying to convince her mother that fruit loops had actual fruit in them.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a head of dark her run past, heading for a spot farther down the meadow. She turned, making herself invisible as she did so, and followed the dark hair with her eyes.

It was Nico, watering can in hand, headed for a cropping of plants that were already fairly tall. Bright green leaves were open, soaking in the sun’s rays and on the top blooms were just beginning to form.

She wandered down the hill, watching as Nico dumped the water on the flowers, spreading it evenly, but being careful not to touch the thick stalks.

The plants reached his chest, and Persephone knew that they would probably end up towering over him. But he was taking good care of the flowers.

“They look almost ready to bloom.” she spoke without thinking, still invisible.

Nico jumped and his head shot around, looking for the source of the voice. Persephone shimmered into view and Nico scowled.

“For a while I thought for sure you gave me tree seeds and not flower seeds.”

“Does that look like a tree to you?!” she shouted indignantly.

“It grew fast...and tall.” He stared at the blooms.

“And they’ll grow taller still, but they’re still flowers.”

“...And they’ll be yellow?” Nico dared to question. He glanced back at the flowers buds, looking at them with such hope, Persephone felt herself soften, just a little.

“As bright as the sun.” she replied. Then she disappeared, uneased by that moment where she didn’t feel any resentment towards the boy, instead only wanting him to feel happy that his hard work would pay off.

Her husband’s affection for the boy must be catching. She made a note never to think of think of it again.

However, the boy, and his tall plants that enjoyed the sunlight never strayed far from her mind. She revisited the meadow often, invisibly looking over the plants in Nico’s absence, though the boy seemed to visit almost daily, afraid that if the plants were out of sight they would wither and die. But instead, they continued to grow strongly, reaching heights where they really were nearly towering over the boy’s head. The flower heads themselves were beginning to open, the only the lower petals reaching the boy’s hairline.

Finally, the flowers fully bloomed, their bright yellow petals and dark centers following Apollo in the sky as he made his way west.

One evening, late into the summer and about an hour before the sun set, she returned to the meadow, box of Lucky Charms in hand to munch absently on while plant watching, and this time Nico had company when he came to water the plants.

His friend was tall, blond, and looked so similar to her annoying half brother that she presumed this had to be Will, the son of Apollo.

The boy was walking cautiously, with Nico guiding him. As they got closer, Persephone saw that the boy had his eyes closed and he was grasping Nico’s hands tightly. “Are we there yet? Or is this just an elaborate plan to knock me off a cliff, di Angelo?”

“Shut up, Solace.” Nico replied.

They both had grins on their faces, clearly at ease with the teasing. Finally Nico led the golden boy to a spot in front of the flowers. “Ok... You can open your eyes now.”

The boy blinked his eyes open, squinting against the harsh evening light, then gasped in delight. “Sunflowers!”

Nico glanced up at the tall plants, whose faces were staring west towards the setting sun. Is that what they are? I thought we ate those...”

Will giggled. “You have to grow them first you goof.” He ruffled Nico’s hair. “The dark centers, that’s where the seeds are.”

“Oh.... good.... I thought they were dying again... like the last--” he cut himself off unwilling to admit that his own hard work went into making this blond happy.

Will glanced down at the slightly shorter boy, connecting the dots anyway. “Nico... did you grown these?” he had a smile on his face and his voice teased.

Nico glared at his feet and hunched over clearly embarrassed.

For just a moment Persephone felt a rush of protectiveness wash over her. If this boy didn’t appreciate the patience and hard work Nico had put in caring for these plants, then clearly he didn’t deserve them. Maybe he would like to be a sunflower instead. Then he could follow his father in the sky day after day.

However, the feeling passed and ended as the blond wrapped two arms around the dark haired boy and squeezed tight.

Nico looked slightly uncomfortable with the show of affection, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, after a moment, he returned the hug, leaning in and resting his head on the taller boy’s shoulder.

Persephone couldn’t even hide her smile. For the time that she had known Nico, a melancholy as well as the aura of the dead had followed him everywhere. Now, though the aura remained, the melancholy had faded and Nico now seemed happy.

Unwillingly Persephone is reminded of the autumn equinox when she returns to the underworld for six months. Hades gets the same look on his face that Nico has now. A mixture of joy and disbelief as if they can’t believe that these bright and shining people actually care about them.

Nico pulled away rather reluctantly. “It’s not a huge deal... I just... you’ve spent so much time with me over the past year... I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Nico, you didn’t have to do anything for me... I wanted to spend time with you. Get to know you more.”

Now both boys were blushing, and Persephone was getting the hint that she shouldn’t be spying anymore. She turned to leave, but not before she spotted the blond, Will, leaning over to give Nico a small, chaste, kiss.

She left before she could witness anymore, and vaguely heard Nico squawking in shock as she spirited away.

She didn’t go far though, appearing in the Hades Cabin at camp. It was empty, with Nico in the meadow and Pluto’s daughter at the other camp. It was cold, but not unpleasantly so, with the stone walls a deep gray and green fire burning, giving the room a vague feeling of the underworld.

There was a row of simple mahogany bunks, clearly more than was needed at any one time at the camp, but the message was clear that, like Hera’s and Artemis’ empty cabins, they were meant to be mostly honorary. Most of the bunks were bare, save for two, one in the corner that was neatly made up but clearly hadn’t been slept in for a while. Pluto’s daughter then.

In the other corner, near the cabin’s solitary window, was another bed that hadn’t been made that morning, and was more of a nest than layers of sheets and blankets. Nearby was a small nightstand that Nico clearly used as a desk. Papers and spare drachma’s were strewn about it, and spilling onto the floor. Several thin books with colorful pictures were tossed about within the general vicinity.

Despite the mess, Persephone quickly found what she was looking for and leaving it along with several white poppies and yellow carnations.

Flower symbolism was a thing of the Victorian era, and made her quite giddy with the attention even her most abstract blooms gained. It’s probably a little old fashioned now, but sometimes the best way Persephone could express herself was through flowers.

She had sent a bouquet of Indian Pinks and Petunias to her mother just that morning, though Demeter hadn’t understood the message, or pretended she didn’t understand as she continued to harp on Persephone to at least try the oat bran cereal. Which is what led her to the meadow in the first place, trying to get in her fill of the sugary stuff before her mother turned it into something healthy again.

Which reminded her. She looked down to her now empty hands. She had left her box of sugary sweetness in the meadow. Leaving her message for Nico behind she whisked back, wanting check on the bo----the flowers. She just wanted to check on the flowers.

She found her Lucky Charms where she had left them.

Looking down the meadow the flowers had clearly enjoyed their time in the late evening sun. Just beside them, two boys were curled up, barely visible with the light of dusk. They had lain down on the grass together, holding on to each other tightly, as if warding off the shadows of the impeding nightfall.

Persephone glanced at the plants one more time, knowing that they were in good hands, before willing herself to return to her mother. Nico would find the note she had left when he returned to camp.

\--

Later that evening Nico did indeed find the note, and the flowers, on his bed in Cabin 13. He nearly choked on the words and then his stomach began to fill with dread.

Nico,

I request your presence for a feast when I return to the Underworld at the Autumn equinox. I also request the presence of your boyfriend to accompany you.

Persephone

PS. my mother will be cooking so you need not worry about some silly revenge plan or something to get your boyfriend cursed to the underworld. I know what you’re thinking, you think much too loudly.

PPS. You need not bring anything, though if you manage to sneak in a box of Lucky Charms, I will try not to glare at you too harshly.

**Author's Note:**

> Flower meanings:
> 
> Dandelion - of course this is a reference to that line Nico says that Persephone turned him in to a dandelion after a family spat. Interestingly, dandelions mean "faithfulness and happiness" in floriography, but I have feeling Persephone was leaning more towards the idea that a dandelion is commonly seen as a weed
> 
> Violet - means modesty, Persephone just wanted to teach Nico to be humble, specially around her flowers
> 
> Daffodil - This flower can mean both "rejected love" and "The sun shines when I'm with you," depending on the context. Given that the flower is shriveled and dead before it ever bloomed, it can also mean "sadness." 
> 
> Sunflowers - Adoration and gratitude
> 
> Indian Pinks and Petunias - Aversion, Annoyance, anger, resentment. Basically Persephone is really, really annoyed with her mother right now. 
> 
> White poppies and yellow carnations- Peace and friendship, or rather, Persephone is trying to give the floral equivalent of an olive branch to Nico.


End file.
